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Remarkable autograph book compiled by Henry Gassaway Davis (1823–1916), West Virginia senator and industrialist, and his daughter Grace Thomas Davis (1869–1931), rebound in full brown morocco, 5.75 x 8.75, containing 289 historic autographs, including seven presidents, seven vice presidents, and scores of members of the Senate, House of Representatives, and presidential cabinets, as well as a few other 19th-century notables. The gilt printed title page reads: "Autographs, J.B. Lippincott & Co., Philadelphia," and bears the signatures of "H. G . Davis, 1872" and "Grace T. Davis, 1887" (Miss Davis was 18 in 1887). The book has approximately 300 unnumbered pages but only the first 144 (which were numbered in pencil by hand at some point) include the autographs, generally three on each side of a page, most often including the person's home state, or, in the case of cabinet members, their office title.
The highlights of the album are the signatures of seven presidents, representing a half-century of American politics: U. S. Grant, Rutherford B. Hayes, James A. Garfield, Grover Cleveland, Benjamin Harrison (twice), William McKinley, and Theodore Roosevelt. Also included are seven vice presidents—Hannibal Hamlin, Schuyler Colfax, Henry Wilson, William A. Wheeler, Levi P. Morton, Garrett A. Hobart, and Charles W. Fairbanks—and one first lady, Frances F. Cleveland.
With the later presidents' autographs are several examples of partial cabinets, including: Harrison (Secretary of the Treasury Charles Foster, Secretary of War Stephen B. Elkins, Attorney General William H. H. Miller, Postmaster General John Wanamaker, Secretary of the Navy Benjamin F. Tracy, Secretary of the Interior John W. Noble, and Secretary of Agriculture Jeremiah M. Rusk), Cleveland (Secretary of State Walter Q. Gresham, Secretary of the Treasury John G. Carlisle, Secretary of the Navy Daniel S. Lamont, Attorney General Richard Olney, Postmaster General Wilson S. Bissell, Secretary of the Navy Hilary A. Herbert , Secretary of the Interior Hoke Smith, and Secretary of Agriculture J. Sterling Morton), McKinley (Secretary of State John Sherman, Secretary of the Treasury Lyman J. Gage, Secretary of War Russel A. Alger, Attorney General Joseph McKenna, Postmaster General James A. Gary, Secretary of the Navy John D. Long, Secretary of Agriculture James Wilson, and Secretary of the Interior Cornelius N. Bliss), and Roosevelt (Secretary of State John Hay, Attorney General Philander C. Knox, Postmasters General Charles Emory Smith and Henry C. Payne, and Secretary of the Interior Ethan A. Hitchcock).
Others significant names include influential members of the House and Senate, many of whom were celebrated veterans of the Civil War. These include: Hamilton Fish, William M. Evarts, Charles Sumner, David Davis, Simon Cameron, James G. Blaine, George S. Boutwell, Augustus H. Garland, Roscoe Conkling, Ambrose Burnside, John A. Logan, John B. Gordon, Carl Schurz, Wade Hampton, John T. Morgan, Henry W. Slocum, and William Mahone. Interestingly, one page features the autographs of James Cardinal Gibbons, Archbishop of Baltimore, and famed agnostic lecturer Robert G. Ingersoll. In fine condition.
